Preplanning your funeral: 5 excellent reasons to do it

Burial, cremation, memorial – have you given any thought to how you’d like the end of your life to be marked or who’s going to cover the costs? While life insurance may lend some financial support to those you leave behind, funding your end of life plan is just one part of the equation, and a relatively small one at that. Here are 5 of the top reasons to preplan your funeral.

1. Preplanning your funeral helps to ensure your wishes are honoured.

By articulating your preferences in a written funeral plan, you get to remove any uncertainty about your wishes. Some want to leave this world without too much fanfare. Others want to be celebrated in style. How you make your final exit really should be up to you.

Perhaps there’s a certain song you want played or poem you want read at your service, or maybe you don’t want a service at all. What about your final resting place? Would you prefer to be laid to rest in a satin-lined casket or would you rather your ashes reside in a simple urn beside a loved one?

If you have a clear vision, consider a preneed plan. This will allow you to pre-select your preferred goods and services with a licensed funeral home. If, however, you’re not ready to think about the specific details, or if you only have a few requisites and are happy to leave the details to your loved ones, a final expense plan may be the better choice for you.

2. By articulating your funeral preferences, you can help minimize family conflict.

Even if you’re completely indifferent about how your end of life is marked, you can be sure your loved ones won’t feel the same when the time comes. Imagine yourself in their shoes for a moment. Every decision they make regarding your funeral will be deeply pondered. They will desperately try to imagine what you would have wanted at this time, and the opinion of one family member may vastly differ from the opinion of another.

The emotional grief and financial stress often brought about by a death can bring out the worst in family members. Decisions that may seem trivial to you – for example, what flowers will rest on your casket – can actually become the cause of serious disputes. By preplanning your funeral, you can significantly minimize the angst of those who simply wish to honour your life in a fitting way.

3. Funeral insurance eases the financial burden on those you leave behind.

Earlier in this post, we made reference to life insurance. Let’s revisit that for a moment. While a life insurance claim will certainly alleviate financial pressure for those you leave behind, there are two reasons it won’t lighten the financial burden when it comes to your funeral:

The typical life insurance claim takes a month or two to process – or longer if an investigation is required. Your funeral arrangements, however, need to be made and paid for sooner. Depending on your family’s financial situation, this could well add undue stress to their grief.

You may have given your loved ones clear verbal indication that you don’t want any elaborate arrangements made when you die, but caught up in their emotions, they may find it hard to give you a financially modest send-off.

By having a preneed or final expense funeral plan in place, you can preempt both of these situations, thereby easing the financial burden on your loved ones.

The cost of a funeral today can range anywhere from the high hundreds to several thousand. While there’s no saying when your time will come, your death isn’t a mere possibility; it’s inevitable. In fact, there’s nothing in life you can count on with such certainty.

Between now and then, life could throw you all kinds of curve balls, many of which could be financially demanding. A law suit could rack up substantial legal bills. An oversight might leave you owing in taxes. An illness could require you to take up residency in a nursing home. With an Assurant funeral plan, the money in your policy is protected, which means it can’t be touched by anyone other than you or your Executor.
Furthermore, it’s not considered an asset, so the government won’t factor it in when determining any subsidies that you’re entitled to.